Today, modern combat forces operating in high threat areas have been forced to operate their combat vehicles with open hatches for roof air guards to protect the vehicles. These air guards are operating while standing in the vehicles and are exposed from the waist/mid chest above the roof of the vehicle through air guard hatches (small doors in the roof of the vehicles). They operate with both personal and crew served weapons to protect the vehicle from roof top threats and they observe the areas surrounding the vehicle to prevent up close attacks. These members of the team also assist the driver in locating and avoiding IED's.
The issue with this type of operational concept is that vehicles today have been designed to resist penetration from IEDs and land mines without taking into account for these air guards. The seats in the vehicle are designed to mitigate the energy that is transferred into the vehicle by “stroking” but this system only works for seated passengers and provides no protection to standing service members. This “stroking” is performed when the seat moves and mitigates away and/or dampens the energy utilizing springs or bent wire methods. For those air guards standing in the roof hatches of the vehicle there is little in the way of protection from injury when subjected to a mine or IED blast.
Each person who is standing up in the vehicle is not protected from injuries as a result of mine blast and IED's on the vehicle. This typically results in severe leg, spinal and head injuries. On occasion this also results in personnel being injured and then ejected from the vehicle, sometimes causing fatalities. The US Military is now using gunner restraint systems to prevent service members from being ejected from the vehicle but does not prevent any injuries as a result of energy absorption into the vehicle. These gunner restraint systems are limited in effective usage and in the event of a vehicle fire they can prevent a service member from escaping the vehicle. Due to the design of this system it is very hard for a rescue crew to extract a service member during a vehicle fire. The entire restraint is under the service member and difficult to reach and remove.
In addition the gunner restraint system of the prior art is limited to those who are able to be anchored to the floor of the vehicle. Rear air guards are not able to be anchored to the floor of the vehicle because they are standing in the path of egress for the dismounted section of the vehicle. Thus, the current system fails to address 50% of the possible injuries that can be caused as a result of a mine blast or IED event. It also has a very limited audience/user community because of the anchoring system.